6 Jim Thorpe Firefighters Return Local Men Fought California Blazes For A Week

July 17, 1985|The Morning Call

Six Jim Thorpe forest firefighters returned yesterday from a week's duty in a four-mile area of Lion Canyon in California's Los Gatos No. 4 forest fire that burned 27,000 acres of brushland.

Eugene F. Dougherty, a Hickory Run State Park maintenance employe who doubles as crew chief, summed up his crew's work in containing the fire in the Lion Canyon area, as relief work for the California forest firefighters who were then moved to other critical areas or allowed to rest after being on line 12 to 14 hours continuously since lightning bolts triggered off the fire in four areas July 4.

"They brought us in their to relieve their own people - to help them out. You can only go so long on something like this and you have to have relief - basically, that's what it comes down to, we were their relief. We were able to go in there and help give those people some kind of relief, get them off that area and go back to some kind of normal life."

Dougherty displayed a souvenir pine cone that resembled a pineapple and said the cones helped spread the fire. He explained the pitch in the cones ignited when they fell.

The Jim Thorpe crew, part of District 18 of the Pennsylvania Bureau of Forestry Division of Forest Fire Protection, Cressona, were among a group flown by a chartered US Air DC-10 that eventually arrived at Sacramento, Calif., after a round-about flight that began Wednesday.

The group left Harrisburg, flew to Philadelphia and to a staging area at Boston, then on to Minneapolis where an additional pickup was made. Originally scheduled to go to Boise, Idaho, Dougherty said they were diverted in flight to Sacramento, and bused to Stockton, where half of the contingency was sent to Lower Lake, Calif., and to the Los Gatos site. Altogether, the staging and flight took about 25 hours, he said.

Dougherty said the group, who also included Mike Butrie, a sewing machine mechanic at Cesare's Apparel Mill in Danielsville; Vince Yaich of Nyleve Construction, Emmaus; Donald Vincler of Atlantic Heat and Oil Co., Allentown; Joseph Bott of Silverline Trucking, Wind Gap, and recent Jim Thorpe High School graduate Lance Malatak, arrived at Colinga, a mining town, where they were briefed on the fire situation and volunteered to contain the fire on a four-mile stretch of the Lion Canyon area. They were trucked the 52 miles to their location by California national guardsmen.

Bott said the pollution effect of the fire was also a concern in, citing stories in local newspapers "because of the immense amount of material that was burned. There were smoke clouds that were 25-30 miles long. It was like a haze blocking out the sun."

He added the Modesto wine-growing area was about 40 miles away and "it was getting near their prime season for harvesting." He said the smoke haze was also expected to affect the vegetable crops in the area "because of the amount of darkness that was over the area and held down the growth."

Bott said a news report indicated California would suffer a $1 billion crop loss because of the forest fires and resulting smog.

Both said the high temperature (100 to 107 degrees), low humidity (5 percent) worked against firefighters, adding that a change in the weather with higher humidity (about 50 percent) finally turned the corner. Dougherty displayed a souvenir pine cone that resembled a pineapple also helped spread the fires, explaining the pitch in the cones ignited and rolled down the steep canyon slopes. At times they slept in disposable sleeping bags and learned that California crickets entered "almost anything."

The containment work by the Jim Thorpe crew saved another 25,000 acres, and the change in the weather allowed the California forestry department to return crews brought in from throughout the East Coast.

Dougherty said his crew was among the last to leave early yesterday morning. This is the second call for the Jim Thorpe crew this year. At Easter, they spent five days in North Carolina. They also spent nine days battling fires in 1973 in Oregon and were called to California for 10 days in 1979.